A new Commercial Court Practice Direction (HC85) was introduced on 12 April 2019, which replaced Practice Direction HC50 of May 2009. Practice Direction HC85 requires practitioners to submit an electronic case report containing certain statistical information to the Courts Service upon the conclusion of the High Court proceedings.
Practice Direction HC85 repeats the provisions of Practice Direction HC50, as well as introducing the aforementioned new requirement. Direction HC85 states that the solicitor submitting the Solicitor's Certificate under Order 63A of the Rules of the Superior Courts is required to undertake that he or she will use his or her "best endeavours" to electronically submit a case report to the Courts Service website within 14 days of the conclusion of the case in the High Court. The case report must be in the form of an Excel spreadsheet and must include an explanatory memorandum. The information to be submitted includes the following:
- Commercial Court Case ID
- Party seeking entry
- Type of matter
- Type of issuing proceedings
- Value of claim
- Origin of parties
- Interim motions
- Date of fixing of trial hearing date
- Trial date
- Anticipated trial duration
- Actual trial duration
- Hearing end date
- Date of judgment
- Outcome
- Costs
- Follow-up
- Enforcement action
- Appeal lodged
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